BRIAN JOHN THORPE
The Panhandler
So
many times I observed the panhandler, slouching in the various
haunts
of city scapes.
So
many times I mistook him for his own shadow or a trick of light
that
only suggested the presence of a man.
When
I managed a sustained look,
I
could never quite discern his face, obscured as it was beneath
tattered
scarves or cumbersome collars.
His
eyes only partially visible peered at me with a mix of
pleading,
curiosity, judgment, resentment or tremulous
expectation.
As
I came near he'd stretch out his hand, clothed in a glove of
funereal
grey.
I
in turn responded with the pitch of a coin, a crumpled bill or a
spare
cigarette and though I couldn't make out his face I had no
pressing
desire to.
A
plethora of faces we're waiting to greet me from future throngs.
Surely
they would be more memorable.
Why
bother with his, I thought.
Often
he'd beckon with the other hand or mumble a comment
incoherent
to ears that scarcely cared to listen, let alone
comprehend.
What
was he, after all, but a pitiful study in human refuse, void
of
future and if ever imbued with a promising past, it had long
since
dissolved into the soot and debris that clung to his
world-weary
shoes.
I
never feared the panhandler as those much wiser might have done.
Indeed,
I grew to anticipate his presence with mundane familiarity.
How
above and beyond him his pathetic visage made me feel as I
vaulted
into youthful excursions, flights and misadventures.
In
so doing, at the dawn of my journeys, I paid him no more
meaningful
thought than I would to a tree stump next to a roadside
diner
or an off ramp to nowhere that served as a cursory
milestone.
He
didn't remain confined to doorways, benches or subway stalls, as one might
expect.
He
was there mingling with the Sherpas while I prepared to scale
imagined
mountains or whispering from the depths of cargo holds as
I
sailed fantastic seas , or even stirring among the unexplored
vistas
of distant planets as I drifted across a thousand galaxies.
No,
I could not see his face but I took a strange comfort in his
constant
form.
It
wasn't until I came to know my own hints of exhaustion, of long
postponed
summations, of introspections taxed, recriminations
begging
for redress, admonitions pleading for repentance that I
came
to contemplate him more and more and approach him from a distance with
increasing dread.
His
gloved hand became a chill reminder of a thirst unquenched,
torches
unlit, beds unmade, pages of a diary left yellowed and
blank,
chances at love left strewn on summer doorsteps or
squandered
in torrid one nighters, prayers never offered, atonements unacknowledged and
pathways to grace that I chose to forego.
All
reckoning with these came back to me in dim silhouettes
scrawled
in the dust of his palm.
Now,
when I return to the labyrinth of city blocks where first I
encountered
him, I do so with a yearning mea culpa.
I
hear his pleading voice with crisp and painful clarity.
He
turns to face me from one more doorway.
He
lowers the tattered scarf and collar.
I
see his features in pitiless sun or glowing moonlight and at
last,
at last they become familiar.
The
face of the panhandler........is my own.
